British Merchants lost faith in the
grading of flax and hemp from the Baltic
States and arranged a new system
in 1829 .. seemingly it was intended to solve the
problem but this too finally collapsed
around 1850 with no further Baltic seals to be
found.
However faith in
the Archangel
grading was still high and these port seals
continued well beyond the end of the
century.
So unfortunately
all of the 20,000
tons of flax and hemp which was imported into
the port of Arbroath in 1881-82
from the Baltic States didn't have any
seals attached.
We did find 2 from
Archangel, and there will be many more out there to be
found.
